Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, group video calling applications such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams have become hugely popular, which has surely motivated Facebook to improve WhatsApp’s poor group video calls, which to date support a maximum of four participants and leave much to be desired in terms of video and audio quality during calls.
According to Wabetainfo, one of the versions of WhatsApp for users of the beta test group, they are already beginning to see a new group video call button, which allows them to start a four-party call immediately instead of having to add participants one by one to the call, as is currently the case.
But more interesting than that, is that in addition, now the application reports the ability to add up to eight people to the callHowever, in order for everyone to join, they must have this latest version of the application installed, which will probably still take a few weeks to be released to the general public.
* WhatsApp New Group call… all 8 participants need the latest version * pic.twitter.com/xWBkItGVUE
– Vancha Kondal Reddy (@kondalreddyv) April 21, 2020
Even though eight participants is already a good number for a group video call, it is still far from the possibilities offered by more robust alternatives such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom with limits of up to 100 participants and many call management functions, such as sharing the screen, or generating a virtual board for everyone to write at the same time.
We already know from history that WhatsApp tends to add functions late that practically the rest of the industry has been handling for a long time, but it is good to see that the pressure of situations like the one we are currently experiencing accelerates their development.
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